Lamar Odom is expected to resign with the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, according to a report on ESPN.com.

While the Miami Heat were a long shot to land Odom, who had a pretty prosperous stay on South Beach before being sent to the West Coast for Shaq, fans were hoping a D-Wade-Odom reunion tour would push them in the class with the Lakers.

But all of King Pat Riley's horses could not reforge the union, it appears, and the Heat roster looks practically the same as it did at the end of last season when it was ousted by the Atlanta Hawks in the playoffs. Riley and Wade traveled to L.A. to persuade Odom to sign with an inferior team for less money. They should have taken the Heat Dancers and the world's biggest bag of jelly beans.

The Heat is reportedly meeting with troubled free agent point guard Jamaal Tinsley, but does that really make a dent in the team or the fans' psyche? No.

And it definitely won't make signing an extension more attractive for D-Wade, who is surely marking off the days on his calender while he awaits for 2010 free agent status and the mythical super powers that will come with it.

The Heat are still rumored to be in the Carlos Boozer sweepstakes, but even those dreams took a back seat to the fantasy that would have been adding a uniquely versatile forward like Odom to the roster.

With fewer and fewer options to improve the team significantly remaining on the market, the hour glass to keeping D-Wade seems to be speeding up with each signing by another team.